Impacts of Journalistic Frames
Journalistic frames often impact audiences' understandings of and attitudes toward a topic or issue. In this way, they influence the realities that those audience members construct. This may include interpretations not only of basic elements, like what happened, but broader (and no less impactful) notions about what is most important or problematic about a topic or issue, who are the good and bad people involved, and what are or aren’t sensible solutions to a given problem.
To illustrate this, consider the two following news briefs about two emerging treatments for a group of 600 people who have been infected by a dangerous virus.
The first news brief notes that if Treatment A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. However, if Treatment B is adopted, there is a 1/3 chance that all 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 chance that nobody will be saved.
The second news brief notes that if Treatment A is adopted, 400 people will die. However, if Treatment B is adopted, there is a 1/3 chance that nobody will die and a 2/3 chance that all 600 people will die.
The depictions in those two news briefs are functionally equivalent, with Treatment A being the risk-averse option and Treatment B being the risk-seeking option. However, if a random set of 50 readers were shown the first brief and another 50 random readers were shown the second, the theoretical expectation is that the people shown the first brief — which is more positive — would be more likely to select the risk-averse option (Treatment A). In contrast, the readers who were shown the second depiction — which is more negative — would be more likely to select the risk-seeking option (Treatment B). This is an example of what we call gain/loss framing, one of the many different approaches to framing in psychology.
However, the extent of those impacts is neither uniform nor universal. Modern theories of message processing reject the view that audiences are passive and just accept journalistic frames. Instead, audiences process those messages in light of their existing knowledge and attitudes, which is in turn shaped by their lived experiences and non-media messages (e.g., discussions with friends and family). For example, a person who has had a negative encounter with the police is generally more likely to accept a frame that centers them as the aggressor — or, conversely, to reject such a frame if their experiences have been exclusively positive.
Repeated exposure to particular frames can develop associations over time. For example, seeing repeated images of police brutality may link the concepts of police and brutality over time, such that when the concept of police is triggered — even in other contexts — the individual will also think about brutal actions. Alternatively, that repeated exposure may make it so that when the concept of brutality comes up, the individual may think of the police as an example. Such connections can be both strengthened and weakened by frames. For example, if that same individual is repeatedly exposed to media examples of police engaging in good deeds, the existing negative connections are challenged and may thus become weaker.
Journalistic frames tend to be most impactful in situations where individuals are highly dependent on journalistic media for their understanding of an issue, and especially when there is greater ambiguity around an issue. That is because there are fewer preexisting associations, allowing the media associations to serve as the primary driver. Thus, journalistic frames are especially impactful when they involve contexts, people, and ideas that are new or foreign to an individual.
Finally, it’s also important to keep in mind that journalistic actors are themselves audiences. They therefore not only have their own lived experiences to draw upon but also regularly consume media messages crafted by other actors. As such, they are also impacted by repeated exposure to certain frames and associations. They may consequently go on to subconsciously repeat elements of dominant frames and associations within their work, which in turn reifies those frames and makes those associations even more salient within society. Conversely, those journalistic actors may seek to use their awareness of the dominant frames to challenge them by including counter-frames that weaken problematic associations.